“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”

“Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place,...”

“It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to ea...”

“She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped...”

“..what moved me was that I had found something I didn't think could exist. And that thing - the thing that I found - was very simple. Most people know all about it and have never really doubted it ...”

“If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time.”

“She had always understood that love could have an intense physical effect; could fill a space somewhere in the chest, could turn knees weak, could raise the pulse; could intoxicate, just as could a...”

“People dont talk about mercy very much these daysit has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it exists and its power is quite extraordinary”

“the world was a vale of tearsit always had been.”

“I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldnt exist anymore.”

“Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself-like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.”

“Guilty feelings about clothes are totally unnecessary. A lot of people earn their living by making clothes, so you should never feel bad.”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”